Band and vacancy engineering in SnTe to improve its thermoelectric performance

SnTe is a promising thermoelectric material with low cost and high stability. SnTe is a promising thermoelectric material with low cost and high stability. However, its performance is limited by the large energy separation between the light hole L band and the lower, heavy hole Σ band. Despite the efforts being made to induce band convergence, the improvements are very limited. In this work, the band flattening was first induced by Sb 2 Te 3 …